Getting prospects to "opt in" to receive more information at a website is a significant goal of interactive marketers.  They create content with strong calls to action, offer compelling reasons to offer up your email address and other information and vigilantly track and monitor opt in rates.  The goal often seems to be getting the opt in, not doing much for the prospect after wards.

As part of research I performed for a client, I opted in to several of their competitors websites.  Of the 5 sites I opted in at, 1 sent me a welcome message within a few hours, and emails fairly regularly thereafter.  Two others sent me an email within the first week, with sporadic communications since.  Two others, or 40% of my sample, have yet to send me anything - 2 months and counting.  Did my opt in take?  Do they have nothing to say to me?  So I ask this simple question, what should a firm do once someone has opted in?

It seems to me that a welcome email or some form of acknowledgment within 48 hours should be the bare minimum.  That email should welcome me to their communication channel, and perhaps even inform me what I should expect now that I have opted in.  Should I expect weekly communications or a monthly newsletter?  Special promotions or general information?

The firms I am receptive to send a welcome email almost immediately.  That is followed up with some form of "standard" email marketing piece within the next few weeks.  If that first real email marketing message shows the firm understands where my interests lay (i.e. what I was doing on their site when I opted in), I quickly start to look forward to their communications as they are viewed as relavent. 

When no welcome email arrives, and weeks or months go by without hearing anything, I feel duped and question what I was thinking when I opted in.  Those sites are not likely to get more traffic from me, and they are likely to be fodder at the next interactive marketing meeting on how to not engage your customers and prospects.  List building has a definite place, but going dark on an eager prospect is no way to grow a business, especially in these tough times.

So, if you have nothing to say, I would question having an opt in area on your website.  If you are doing simple list building, I would at least mandate a welcome email, and in that email I would set an expectation of sporadic communications.  Users will understand what you tell them.  But in the absence of telling them anything, the best you can hope for is that they will simply move on, and you will have missed a good opportunity with an interested prospect.  At worst, you might get called out in an interactive marketing blog as the poster child of how not to run an opt-in interactive marketing campaign.